Paper long abstract:

Though Britain's engagement with Africa predates it, the nineteenth century witnessed the steady and sometimes rapid growth of British military engagement with the continent. For manifold reasons, British land, air, and maritime forces operated around and across the continent, often at the behest of the British government, though usually not. Private interests in Africa - missionary, explorer, hunter, trader, or settler - often bared military teeth to the Africans among whom they walked, and firearms became as enduring a symbol of Britain's involvement with Africa as minerals, missionaries, and traders. British activity in Africa also accelerated the proliferation of firearms that contributed towards African instability and resource competition.

Away from the private sphere, British governments had occasion to sanction military expeditions to Africa, from classic gunboat diplomacy (bombardment of Zanzibar 1896, intervention of Royal Marines in Bechuanaland 1933), to humanitarian operations (anti-slavery naval patrols), to campaigns against indigenous kingdoms (Ashante, Zulu), campaigns fought with African allies against 'unfriendly' tribes (Maasai alliance), and campaigns against European rivals for supremacy on the continent (Battle of the Nile, Fashoda, Anglo-Boer wars, campaigns against Germans 1914-18). Furthermore, with the formal establishment of British rule military force became a key arbiter of the authority of the colonial state, suppressing resistance during the 'pacification' period, dealing with subsequent uprisings (Nandi, Ndebele, Shona), and providing the cold steel frame that girded the steel frame of skeletal colonial administrations.

The end of the pacification period did not diminish the importance of military power in Africa, and actions continued to be fought throughout the twentieth century before the post-war period of insurgency and nationalism that brought a return to large and costly military intervention on the continent. In the twentieth century, Britain came to rely on African manpower and bases to support its imperial system.